


worn by all of the dust

by meanderingsoul



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Cuddling & Snuggling, Doubt, Gen, Getting Together, Grief/Mourning, Hugs, Introspection, M/M, Nesting, Past Character Death, Permanent Injury, Post-Episode: s12e23 All Along the Watchtower, Resurrection, Season/Series 12, The Winchester Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-25
Updated: 2017-05-25
Packaged: 2018-11-04 12:08:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10990647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meanderingsoul/pseuds/meanderingsoul
Summary: The Winchester's were...hovering.





	worn by all of the dust

 

The Winchesters were... hovering.

It wasn’t any one gesture from either of them, but they were hovering nonetheless. They had been ever since Castiel was awoken from that, from that place a few months ago.

Hands brushed over his arms and shoulders frequently, when they came across him in the kitchen or the library or when he was attempting to repair the old telescope they’d never used. Dean touched his wrists when he handed him hot coffee or cold water, rested a palm on his back sometimes when they walked, patted his legs when they were driving or watching movies. Sam draped an arm around his shoulders sometimes as they worked, researching a way to ‘re-key the locks’ of the bunker, a method to create new keys that only this door would accept and then no other. Sometimes he squeezed a shoulder and swayed him side to side the way he had once, or patted a hand against the side of Castiel’s face and neck when they parted company.

Even Mary touched him now. She never had before, only to render aid when he’d been wounded by Ramiel. His very existence had startled her at first. But she woke earlier in the days than Sam and Dean, would walk outside the bunker with him to watch the sun rise, would squeeze his arm when they went back inside. It seemed friendly. Others had touched him like that before, but he preferred this. 

Mary, like Sam, was not to use the stove in the kitchen due to the inevitable mess and sometimes smoke. Castiel did not know how to cook. He could only make sandwiches. But, sometimes Castiel made coffee while they waited for Dean to wake. They’d drink it quietly and he’d watch the crackling bright blue of her soul. It had grown so much brighter while he’d been in that place.

Castiel stirred sugar into his coffee with a chipped spoon.

Sometimes he wondered what all had happened in his absence. He wasn’t the only one living who shouldn’t be. But he did not ask.

Dean hugged him at his door at night. Every night without fail, tight and lingering, warm light curled close like new leaves. Those were moments Castiel had seldom had before, rare things he’d held precious and fleeting in his mind, and now those embraces were his in abundance. If Castiel was not entering his own room to rest, the embrace took place outside Dean’s familiar door. He could rest his hands against Dean’s back or shoulders or skull and the embrace would still linger. Dean didn't withdraw when Castiel touched him anymore. 

Dean said little, but they’d never needed an abundance of words.

Things were strange, but Castiel had come to crave the continuation of these changes in mere days.

The world had fallen again into a different path that had been planned for it. The contacts between dimensions had shifted, had thinned, in the wake of all the portals between realms that had been ripped open on this world. It was easier to maintain his Grace on this earth than it had been before. The lines of energy had changed. Hell had become as inaccessible as it had been before the Apocalypse broke down the old Seals.

All that remained of his angelic form would puddle easily within a pair of cupped hands.

He would still burn those hands to cinders, but that was hardly the point.

Either this had been one death too many, one offence to the natural order too much for life to repair his strength, or perhaps he had lingered too long in that other place. He was greatly diminished, not just flightless. He suspected smiting a creature may be beyond his power now, though his body remained strong and his angelic sight intact. He would have mourned that loss.

Healing had also been left to him, and that was of far greater value.

They were ‘remodeling’ the bunker. This is what Dean called it, though little of the fundamental shape of the bunker was being changed. The bunker remained a four level oblong structure, sunk into the earth half beneath the abandoned power station. Dean was constructing a second door to mimic the first, one that was also warded with sigils and herbs, one that locked with heavy bolts but was not wired into the rest of the bunker’s systems.

Mary told him how they’d been left to suffocate here as they’d been awake together one night. She slept as inconsistently as her sons. It had seemed a foolish plan to him. The Winchester’s had obviously escaped far more dire situations.

Castiel still slept very little. He quietly reset a lens in the telescope. 

Castiel had worked with Dean in peaceful silence while he’d finished crafting the door, with the hot metal scents from welding and a small crucible crafted from an old barrel. They worked within the old power building, the floor swept down to simple dust and the windows pouring in muted sunlight. The ones facing the road were left grimy to hide their presence. Castiel helped steady the heavy steel, helped lift things from the crucible, or he sat in the hulking shadows of the old power equipment that had been abandoned. Dean was wordless the first few days, then he started to hum absently. They acquired an old tape player with speakers. After nearly two weeks Dean asked him idly whether there was space between the different universes or if they were all pressed together like foam and Castiel felt some lingering tension within himself ease.

This began to feel almost normal.

Castiel rested at night. Sometimes he slept. He still didn’t eat, but drinking made things easier for his body, made him more easily energetic.  It was one less draw on his remaining level of Grace to hydrate his body this way, though urination was still so tiresome. He liked the scent and taste of coffee. Mary liked tea. He would join her when she brewed some. She teased Sam for drinking it cold. Castiel found he liked juice. It was sweet and uncomplicated. Complicated things still tasted mostly of molecules.

He and Dean drank fizzy beer together outside while they watched the stars. He and Dean did not speak. Sometimes Sam would join them. Sometimes he stayed inside to talk to the girl he’d come to like in one of Castiel’s absences. Sam brightened in her company. They spoke in flickering gestures. Castiel looked forward to meeting her. He had so rarely had the chance to meet their friends.

Sam and Castiel were working on crafting a lasting, notice-me-not spell for around the bunker. “We don’t want any muggles around here anymore than we want people coming to break in,” Sam said. They’d stayed up to watch Harry Potter the other night, so Sam knew he understood. They were waiting to hear back from Tasha Banes, an earth with they had met, about a possible conflict between one spell they’d found and the older wards. Castiel had never had any particular interest in spellwork, unlike his brothers Gabriel or Balthazar. Witchcraft carried a commitment to learning that craft, whether demonically powered or an inherent skill. He only knew Enochian spellwork, most of it unsuitable here among spells powered mainly by blood and vegetation.

Mary had a dozen different phones now and Dean had set up a landline phone into the bunker. They were still all just so many signals to Cas. He could hear their chatter throughout the rooms. She checked them all multiple times a day, but didn’t leave. The hunters who called her were recorded in a log and either directed to other hunters who specialized in the issue they were having or to others nearby. Sam answered the phones as well.

Mary said, “We kept track of most hunting groups, of other families, back when I was young. Not the loners, but phones make it so easy. There’s the internet too, but there’s too much internet. I don’t really like it.”

Sam huffed at a new text message. “Obviously centralized control like the brits wanted isn’t an ideal for us, but having some coordination…we should have that. Bobby used to be a place hunter’s knew they could call. There used to be other meet-up points like the Roadhouse, but we lost most of those in the Apocalypse and never rebuilt them,” he said and squeezed Castiel’s shoulder. “It’s time to rebuild.”

Dean shrugged and said, “We might as well. Who else is gonna.”

They’d been riding north in Castiel’s truck, on the way to buy a better machine to dry clothes from a listing Sam had found online. Dean rode beside him with one hand curled around Castiel’s thigh, the envelope of paper money between his legs and stared out the window while Castiel drove.

Sometimes Castiel monitored the phones late in the night, took down messages for Mary to read in the morning or relayed needed information from their library or his very long memory. It seemed to be appreciated.

The second door for the Winchester’s home was well crafted, smooth metals and precise sigils. Dean had always been skilled in his craftsmanship. Castiel had helped lift it into place where the hole in the bunker’s concrete was.

The door for the lower level had already been mostly finished when he’d woken. He’d been in that other place for some time.

Dean wanted to retrieve the air vent from Bobby’s panic room to place in that second exit tunnel they’d constructed. The iron devil’s trap was strong and had been thoroughly blessed. It would keep many things from descending that tunnel with ill intent. The old vent would have to be dug from the remains of the house. It would take days.

Castiel had suggested he could retrieve it himself, there was little else for him to do and much happening here. There were phones and research and someone still wanted help with a Vetala in Colorado and he’d watched Dean put in an order for concrete stains last night, lying quietly together in Castiel’s bed.

The refusal was immediate. Its vehemence surprised him, but he agreed they’d all go together instead.

But it did make Castiel finally realize he hadn’t been allowed from their sight since he’d gasped in air, with dirt gritty on his face and the sun harsh in his eyes, that those events had been several months ago, that he’d been in that other place for months before that.

Perhaps this was, more than hovering because he’d been injured again.

More days passed. The second entrance and air shaft for the bunker was well fortified now. They moved furniture between rooms, sorted items and filing systems. Castiel could lift things easily that otherwise took the three Winchesters together to move. It was hard to grip them well in a body with only two arms, shelves made from iron and silver inlays to store cursed objects, filing cabinets with labels too faded to read. Mary laughed and steadied them for him as they went up and down stairs.

They alternated bedrooms with offices. It wasn’t just room 15 that was outfitted with clean sheets and furniture for guests. 15 had become Castiel’s room for now. 11 still belonged to Dean. A disused office sat between them, with a desk and a lamp and an armchair with the dust beaten out of the cushions. Room 9 had become a second armory, more of a workroom, with a long table, gun oils, and whetstones. 17 was an office space that caught the overflow of library work. Sam kept most of his notes there now, though he slept in 21. Mary slept in room 26 down the hall. The other rooms waited, clean and empty.

Sometimes Castiel laid on his bed with Sam’s headphones and failed to sleep. He always switched to Dean’s cassette those nights, the familiar songs that tasted like car exhaust.

His back did not ache. He couldn’t feel his wings anymore, no pain or twitch or flex. He could not spread them. It seemed more likely this time that they were simply _gone_ , not just inaccessible like when his Grace had been cut out.

There was no such creature as a wingless angel. Reapers were wingless because they were meant to be. He was something else now. Castiel the angel had ended.

There was no reason to worry over it. He was used to missing flight, was used to knowing he’d never have that particular joy again. His remaining siblings had turned their gaze from him long ago. Joshua was gone. Hannah was gone. Benjamin was gone. There was no family for him in Heaven. His family was here, and he didn’t need flight while he stayed in their warren home.

Dean made marinara and meatballs for dinner, all from scratch. Mary helped him roll the little orbs of meat together with a bemused expression, sharing lilting conversation and easy silence. Dean was still often quiet, though he spoke easily. Sam sat across from Castiel at the big library table and looked up frequently, smiling when their eyes met. Castiel smiled too.

They ate all together in the kitchen. Castiel set the utensils out in the proper arrangement. Dean set a cold glass of orange juice at his place at the table, tipped a meatball onto his plate so he could try it. Dean’s hand rubbed warm between his shoulders as he sat down. Mary told them how Deanna Campbell had also been a skilled cook. Dean told them about his first restaurant employment at 16. Castiel cut his meatball into quarters and ate it even though he could only taste the oregano. It was still good.

Sometimes he dreamed of that place.

Dean always knew somehow. He would dream and Dean would already be there, lying next to him under the covers but not touching, would be staring evenly at his face when Castiel inevitably gasped awake. Dean never asked about the dreams, like he already knew of them too, though there was no way he could. They’d stare at each other in the dark, the way Castiel had used to stare when Dean’s soul and his mind were both a mystery. Dean reached for him without hesitancy, would pull them chest to chest, legs tangled, foreheads touching together on the pillow. Then they’d sleep, Dean’s slow heartbeat pulling Castiel back under every time. If he reached out first Dean came close just the same. It had always been obvious how Dean craved touch, but sometimes it had made him anxious to be held onto. The first time he’d slept in Castiel’s grasp he’d stared so long his lids caught against his dried out eyes when he’d finally blinked.

Sometimes all of this felt like a dream. They hadn’t left the bunker to hunt in weeks. There hadn’t been sign of demon nor angel activity in weeks.

Sam lingered next to him on the couch one night, stayed until he dozed off, tipping slowly sideways to rest against Castiel’s shoulder. He turned off their movie but Sam didn’t wake. His body grew heavier with sleep and eventually Cas turned to the side so Sam’s torso came to lean along his own chest, his folded leg on the couch pinned under his lean torso. Castiel let himself smooth Sam’s hair back from his face, the way he’d done once as Sam shook from pain. The strands were silky and warmed from the way Sam’s body ran too hot, from the old poisoned blood and lingering shards of Grace.

Sam stayed heavy and dreamless. Mary and Dean were asleep downstairs. The bunker was locked and quiet.

Castiel idly mused whether Samuel’s wings would have reflected his soul or his complexion. Angel’s wings reflected their age, rank, and skills though it wasn’t just the colors of course; the brightness, size, and shape were factors as well. Castiel could never picture them as archangels, it felt too much like old fears. He pictured Sam as just another malakim, two wings russet and umber and banded spruce green or garnet and indigo speckled with slate. He sifted the brown strands of hair between his fingers.

Sam woke with a snuffle of air after a while. Castiel pulled his hand away, but Sam didn’t sit up. He uncurled his fingers and pressed them over Castiel’s beating heart with a faint frown.

“Sam, are you sure everything is alright here?” He had to ask. He had to know.  He was out of that place, but this couldn’t last forever. There had to be something.

Sam’s hand stilled. “We’re starting to bug you, aren’t we.”

“I am not bugged Sam, but if there’s something you need to tell me, just tell me please.”

Cas was living here waiting for a storm rolling in that he still couldn’t even glimpse on the horizon, but he knew it was coming.  

Sam sat up, yawned through a tight jaw and blinked at the floor. He smiled but didn’t look up. There was no twist of fear or tension in the rich gritty colors of his soul and Castiel did not _understand_.

“I know we’ve been clingy. It’s just, this was the first time we had a body, you know?”

Oh.

Castiel hadn’t given any thought that remains would make this resurrection different. He’d only thought of the longer time.

“The first time, we weren’t even there for it, the next were both explosions and then it was just your coat left. Dean kept it in the trunk for months, no matter how much we had to switch cars. Then I woke up from being um, crazy, and you had no idea we were even there, so it was kind of like you had died that time too.”

“You only were in that place because of me,” he said, because he had to suddenly, because they’d mentioned it before, the ways Lucifer lingered, but he’d never apologized when Sam could hear him, not really.

“Yeah, but you fixed it. You fixed my head for me Cas, I’m not still mad about that. Of course I’m not. Shit, no. That was, a long time ago. And honestly, the Wall was never going to hold. I couldn’t stop scratching. It would have broken eventually anyway.” Sam shrugged and patted his leg. “Then with Purgatory, both of you were just gone. This time we uh had to lay you down in the backseat and… and we buried you.  Here, out back. We buried you. They say the uh, the not knowing is the worst. But, I think knowing you were gone for good was actually a lot worse.”

Castiel tried to imagine burying any of them, leaving their bodies behind with the souls long gone and he knew it wasn’t something he was able to bear. He’d known that for years now.

“It’s mostly a blur, really. We got back here. Somehow. A bunch of days just vanished. I uh, finally made Dean eat something and we tried to get back in the game. We had to find Mom. Jack was… But. It was so quiet, just us. It actually took me days to figure out Dean really couldn’t make himself talk. He didn’t say a word until you woke up.”

And none of them knew exactly how that had happened, any more than any of the others did.

“You missed me,” Castiel finally said. It wasn’t wholly unexpected, they’ve shared much, but he hadn’t quite realized how things had stood when he was dead.

Sam squeezed a hand around his arm, gave a shuddering laugh. “Cas you have no idea. I started to text you so many times. And it wasn’t even, it was mostly just the usual crap. If this account of Babylon was close to right, that there was a new documentary out about sharks that actually looked decent. That I was worried about you. That Dean needed to talk to you.” He sniffed. “I was kinda glad your old phone crapped out. I finally just started sending them like you might still get them someday.”

“Did that help?” He’d never thought to text them when he was somewhere they couldn’t talk.

“Ah, not really.”

Sam yawned and stood. Castiel walked Sam to his bedroom door, reached up and tugged him down into an embrace, swayed them side to side. Sam patted Castiel’s back twice, a mirror of the first time they’d done this years ago. He rested a hand against Castiel’s face before he shut his door.

Castiel went outside and stared at his grave sometimes. They hadn’t done him the indignity of marking it with a cross. Dean watched him from the shadowed walls of the old power station or the ramp down to the garage with blank eyes.

Two familiar hands had pulled him up from the hole in the dirt. Mary had pressed water into his grasp and he’d cleared his mouth, poured the rest over his face, blinked them into sight. This world was color and light and he’d grown used to that other place.

Sam’s eyes were wet. Mary was smiling. Dean had pulled him close by the shoulders like he had in Purgatory, rasped _Cas_ into his ear over and over.

He was unsteady on his feet that first day. They helped him down to the showers. Castiel peeled off his rotten clothes, closed his eyes under the water, blinked and found himself sitting in the spray with mud pooled between his feet on the tile and Dean staring at him through the steam. He’d sat down and stayed when the other two left.

“I’m sorry I didn’t dig you up before. I didn’t realize how it would feel,” he’d heard himself say. Earth crumbled away between his fingers down the drain.

Dean’s expression twisted, but he didn’t look away. He stood and turned Castiel’s face out of the spray of water, washed the earth from his hair.

This night Castiel turned around and Dean was standing outside his bedroom door.

The soft pants he slept in folded around his feet. The grey robe was tied loosely with no shirt underneath. He backed away into his darkened room and Castiel followed, closed the door behind them. Dean breathed without a sound but Castiel could still see him in the dark.

“I don’t know why you did it. Any of it. I don’t care anymore. I’m done. I’m past it. I’m past so, so many things. But I watched your light burn out. I watched you fall down on the dirt. And I waited. I stood there and waited. Because it has never stuck. And you…you…”

Castiel watched, startled as Dean’s eyes welled over with tears, slick lines trailing down his face but his gritted expression didn’t change. He’d never seen him cry like this.

“Dean…”

“I have the ash from your wings in a jar. We scooped it up with our… I didn’t know what else to do. It’s under my bed. We couldn’t just _leave_ it there. You were _gone_.”

Dean’s hands fisted in his shirt and Castiel pulled him close, the way that had finally become familiar, twined these two arms around his waist and shoulders and held tight. Dean made a wounded sound into his shoulder.

“Dean, I…”

“I don’t ever want you to leave again. I want you to stay here. Stay here with us. With me. Please. We’re your family. There’s so much we’ve never had a chance to do. I need you here.”

Castiel gripped Dean’s skull, his hair caught between his fingers to hold his head still, and waited until Dean met his eyes. “I love you,” he said.

Dean didn’t try to look away this time. His fist rested over Castiel’s heart. “Stay with me.”

“There is nothing I’d rather have than this Dean.”

Dean kissed him, a quick press to his mouth then cheek then neck where he hid his face. Cas closed his eyes and breathed him in, oak green and shimmering salt and iron.

“You’ve been so quiet Cas,” Dean muttered into his shoulder.

He realized suddenly that he had, how little he’d spoken here. He laughed softly and felt it in these ribs. “Sometimes it’s hard to believe this is real.”

Dean’s grasp tightened. “I’m here. You’re right here with me Cas. Wouldn’t you know me anywhere?”

He would. He had. He’d known Dean at first sight in Hell, dead in Heaven, poisoned by the Mark, warped into a demon, known the paltry simulacrums of him in Heaven that could never compare, heard his voice in Purgatory like a lighthouse on the shore.

Perhaps the next storm wasn’t coming for him quite so fast as he had thought.

“You’ve built a home of this place,” he said into Dean’s mussed hair.

He had. From the muffin pans in the kitchen, the laundry they’d made of one of the boiler rooms, the green-stained walls of Mary’s bedroom, Sam’s office, the piece of Bobby’s home brought here to rest, the red blanket on Dean’s bed, and Castiel’s mended coat hanging inside the front door. This was a home from out of the rock.

“Yeah, that’s kinda been the whole point buddy. Stay with me.”

“Yes.”

Their first kisses on the mouth were simple things, soft gestures that blended into the sensations of this tight embrace and relief and Dean’s heavy head on his shoulder, a long time coming.

Castiel felt awake for the first time in months and Dean claimed he couldn’t go back to sleep, but the telescope was fixed. The dirty lenses, loose screws, and the rusted gears had all been mended these past months while he’d waited to lose what he had. The skylight rattled as it cranked open above them to show the sky and a crescent moon. Dean pointed out Jupiter and Orion in a sleepy murmur. Castiel turned the telescope to a familiar patch of sky.

There were planets there, though they could only see the stars. One’s atmosphere hovered as a thick pink murk. One rained molten glass like glowing knives. They were never his purpose, such places did not require the work of angels, but he knew now he’d never see any of them again.

A long time ago he’d thought about taking Dean to see them, flying them there as a gift or a break in toil, when he’d still trusted the systems of Heaven enough to believe he’d be able to keep company with Dean’s soul and come and go as they pleased.

Wingless none of that mattered. He had died as an angel and had no intention of ever doing so again.

So he talked. Dean sat folded down between his legs, arms resting along Cas’s thighs, his head resting back on his stomach with Cas’s fingers in his hair and listened.

This was paradise enough.

 

**Author's Note:**

> So I have very mixed feelings (so many) about the finale, and while I wanted to write a coda I didn't really want to wade in to writing a fully worked out fix-it. This was my answer to that. I wrote this to be as vague and dreamy as I felt I could make it without being hopelessly confusing. It's been a long time, but Castiel has finally settled into his real home. I hope some of our characters can get some real closure this fall. The title here is from To Build a Home by the Cinematic Orchestra. 
> 
> Thanks for reading <3


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